Burner: Fanning The Flames
BURNER exploded out of the underground last year with their debut EP A Vision Of The End, landing them support slots on tour with EMPLOYED TO SERVE and more. A raucous blend of death metal and hardcore along with a penchant for pointed lyricism, savage guitar work and unhinged drumming, anticipation for a debut full-length swiftly spiked, especially with the band playing a number of at the time unreleased songs at their shows. That LP arrives June 23 in the form of It All Returns To Nothing, and we caught up with a full three quarters of the band to talk about it.
“It’s been a weird year,” reflects vocalist Harry Nott. “Our drummer left, and it took us a while to get a new drummer.” Guitarist Nathan Harlow agrees; “we weren’t playing shows for a few months and we didn’t have anything to post about. We had to keep reminding ourselves that doesn’t mean people aren’t still listening to the EP.” Out the other side of that though, having recorded the album with their previous drummer and recruited a new member to the fold who cut their teeth in UK metallic hardcore outfit RENOUNCED, the band feel like they’re back on an even footing.
The overwhelmingly positive reception to that previous EP also wasn’t expected, but it didn’t impact their approach to It All Returns To Nothing. Bassist Finn Gannon explains, “we had most of the album done by the time [A Vision Of The End] came out,” which meant while the songs themselves didn’t change structure, they did in fact change around the singles they’d originally planned to release. “Most of the album was written,” Harry agrees, “and we were playing album songs when we were playing our first bunch of shows.”
Despite being worked on close to the same time, if not in tandem, there’s still an obvious evolution between the releases, which the band put down squarely to simply having more time to explore the edges of their sound with the album compared to a 17-minute EP – twice as long, in fact. Take album track Struggle Session; despite the punishing death metal drumming, it’s far more of a hardcore song in attitude and execution, whereas a song like Ingsoc from their debut EP was far more of a crossover between the two worlds.
Alternatively there’s the comparatively sprawling An Affirming Flame, that spreads over a full seven minutes and change, embracing pummelling death, blackened moments and even an interlude. “The thing people really liked on the EP was the title track, the almost proggy elements as there’s so many sections, it ebbs and flows. That was the plan for An Affirming Flame, just bigger and better,” grins Finn. With Harry intoning “nothing changes, if we don’t change ourselves”, it’s a rare moment of respite amongst the rest of the pummelling album that soon changes gear into grinding death/doom, that sounds utterly colossal.
When it comes to the themes of such abrasive music, the band are all very much on the same page. “We do let Harry do his thing,” grins Nathan, “but there’s never been a situation where we don’t agree with what he’s saying.” Take Hurt Locker; its name might refer to the film, and by extension the Iraq war, but it’s a metaphor for any war waged on the basis of propaganda – i.e. all of them. “Propaganda lures people to their deaths, it creates people who can do horrible things,” Harry points out.
Elsewhere, Prometheus Reborn is a damning indictment of nuclear armaments and those that use them; “I almost imagine writing lyrics form the perspective of, say Oppenheimer, FDR or Truman and having the will to use nuclear weapons, like some absolute fucking madman. It’s terrifying. The power of them is insane.” Similarly, Pillar Of Shame examines the atrocities of Tiananmen Square where a protest was brutally crushed by dictators wielding supreme power, and Waco Horror “is about a lynching that happened in the early twentieth century, a horrible, horrible event.”
None of this is to glorify war or atrocity; these are brutal expositions of atrocities visited by people on each other, yes, but ultimately, “it’s about humans,” Harry explains. “I want to remind people; this is a critique of hatred. It’s about the driver for power, the reduction of people into pawns in the games of dictators or people with power to be moved, abused, ruined and killed.” These aren’t your run of the mill death metal lyrics (though they do have a song about killing racists with tornados), but instead speak to a deeper horror and revulsion at atrocity and a yearning for people to better understand the world and others.
Again, where their A Vision Of The End EP was scathing lyrically, It All Returns To Nothing offers the same kinds of insightful lyrics that explore not only the horrors that people can visit on each other but seeks to stress the humanity that lurks beneath, to try and reconnect with one another and forgo the violence. Strange territory for death metal, perhaps, given its near obsession with, and predilection for, guts and gore, but one they think sets them apart if you choose to dig into their lyrics. “I want to be an idealist with my music, to believe in something. If there’s no space for it in music, there isn’t a space for it anywhere else.”
It All Returns To Nothing is out now via Church Road Records.
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